It’s Official: Europe’s Youth Counts Ten Times Less Than Its Banks

At the last summit of European heads of state in Brussels at the end of June, the main theme was youth unemployment, which has now reached 23% of European youth (although it stands at 41% in Spain). Last year, the International Labour Organization issued a dramatic report on 'Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012' in which it spoke of a “lost generation”. According to projections, the generation currently seeking to enter the market place will retire with a pension of just 480 euro – if it actually succeeds in entering the market – because of temporary jobs without social contributions.

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mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial”>This is not exactly a revolutionary proposal, and has been criticised as insufficient by many analysts and regulators. This is confirmed by the fact that the U.S. Federal Reserve estimates that between 90 and 95 percent of banks with assets of less than 10 billion dollars already respect such parameters. Under the old capitalist economy, no enterprise would run without capital adequate to its need. Today we have a new branch of economy, which wants to play without capital, and expects the state to bail it out if anything goes wrong. So, let us just look briefly at how many times things went wrong without anybody ever going to jail.

line-height:150%;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black”>*Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News.